Each of the eight teams has at least one key strength, from Swiss speed to Spanish defence The World Cup has reached the quarter-final stage and the favourites to reach the last four in descending order of likelihood, according to Opta, are France, Spain, Argentina and England. All eight remaining teams have positive data in their favour from the tournament, though. Continue reading...
Each of the eight teams has at least one key strength, from Swiss speed to Spanish defence The World Cup has reached the quarter-final stage and the favourites to reach the last four in descending order of likelihood, according to Opta, are France, Spain, Argentina and England. All eight remaining teams have positive data in their favour from the tournament, though. Continue reading...
Using a digital flat-bed scanner, our picture editor Jonny Weeks adapts some of his favourite images from the tournament and explores the trend of alternative photography Although I’ve edited thousands of football photographs over the years, I’ve never attended a World Cup match. I envy those who get to be pitchside with their cameras for such big events. Yet, as I’ve discovered during this tourna...
Using a digital flat-bed scanner, our picture editor Jonny Weeks adapts some of his favourite images from the tournament and explores the trend of alternative photography Although I’ve edited thousands of football photographs over the years, I’ve never attended a World Cup match. I envy those who get to be pitchside with their cameras for such big events. Yet, as I’ve discovered during this tournament, you don’t have to be there to create experimental images of the tournament. Slit-scanning is an alternative photographic process that I first tried many years ago . Using a narrow slit inside an analogue camera, the photographer winds a roll of film past the aperture to record the flow of time. It’s a tricky and laborious technique which produces curiously distorted results – almost like celebrating the problem of “rolling shutter”, which has vexed photographers for generations. Continue reading...
Whenever major reform is proposed the media, big business and Westminster quickly conclude it’s too expensive and disruptive. This doesn’t bode well for Andy Burnham In an old, often anxious and conservative country, the perception of risk is a potent political weapon. If a policy or a project for reforming the UK seems too risky, or can be made to seem so by its opponents, then it can usually be ...
Whenever major reform is proposed the media, big business and Westminster quickly conclude it’s too expensive and disruptive. This doesn’t bode well for Andy Burnham In an old, often anxious and conservative country, the perception of risk is a potent political weapon. If a policy or a project for reforming the UK seems too risky, or can be made to seem so by its opponents, then it can usually be quickly killed off. It can be added to the pile of possible futures that never occurred. In politics as in life, riskiness is sometimes real. To see that Brexit or Britain’s involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq might not end well did not require huge foresight. Yet often the perception of risk is politically constructed: a reflection of powerful forces, their self-interest, and what they do or don’t want to happen. Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
She was a member of the influential rap collective, then the alt-R&B hitmakers – but struggled to find her own voice. Now, after realising she ‘didn’t like anybody else’s beats’, she’s made a solo album that is truly hers There was a time when Sydney Bennett really wanted “something to show for all of my hard work”. The 34-year-old singer-rapper-producer-engineer was a member of Odd Future, the an...
She was a member of the influential rap collective, then the alt-R&B hitmakers – but struggled to find her own voice. Now, after realising she ‘didn’t like anybody else’s beats’, she’s made a solo album that is truly hers There was a time when Sydney Bennett really wanted “something to show for all of my hard work”. The 34-year-old singer-rapper-producer-engineer was a member of Odd Future, the anarchic Los Angeles rap collective that also included Tyler, the Creator, Frank Ocean and Earl Sweatshirt. In 2011, that group birthed the Internet, the indie-R&B band Bennett formed with her best friend, Matt Martians. Since then, Bennett has released two acclaimed solo records, collaborated with Beyoncé and Kehlani, and been nominated for a Grammy, alongside the Internet. Still, around the time of her last album, 2022’s Broken Hearts Club, she started hoping for an award or public recognition. But then she bought a house – a nice spot on the same street she grew up on in Mid-City, LA – “and now I’m happy”. I look at her quizzically, sitting across from me in a private room in a hotel in east London, as she takes a sip of pineapple juice. It was as simple as that, I ask? She lets out a guffaw, flashing a set of perfect teeth. “I’m afraid it was,” she says, grinning conspiratorially. Continue reading...
Tottenham’s strategies have changed over the years and this summer’s transfer splurge marks a sharp turn away from the Levy years A couple of weeks ago, Sotheby’s in London concluded one of its biggest art auctions. In all, the sale of 25 modern and contemporary works raised almost £300m. Seated Nude With Necklace, by Modigliani, went for £41.5m; La Belle Promenade, by Magritte, went for £13.5m. A...
Tottenham’s strategies have changed over the years and this summer’s transfer splurge marks a sharp turn away from the Levy years A couple of weeks ago, Sotheby’s in London concluded one of its biggest art auctions. In all, the sale of 25 modern and contemporary works raised almost £300m. Seated Nude With Necklace, by Modigliani, went for £41.5m; La Belle Promenade, by Magritte, went for £13.5m. And amid all the feverish commentary on the resilience of the London art market and the enduring appeal of post‑war pieces among the younger generation of collectors, one question above all presented itself: was this all for the benefit of Roberto De Zerbi? Naturally, it would be premature to link the sale of a significant portion of Joe Lewis’s art collection to the lavish summer transfer spending of the football club he owns. But of course money is money, and in a summer where Tottenham Hotspur are spending an unprecedented £230m in the transfer market, funded in large part through cash injections from the Lewis family, the connections make themselves. Are Tottenham’s owners selling off the family heirlooms to pay for Jan Paul van Hecke? And on a wider level, what exactly are the Premier League’s 17th-best club playing at here? Continue reading...
Gary got a free festival ticket and agreed to go halves on a full-price one for Rita, but now he won’t stop going on about it. He says calling it a favour is simply a fact. You decide who the party pooper is • Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror The way he presents it makes me feel as though I’m being a burden or that I now owe him something Continue reading...
Gary got a free festival ticket and agreed to go halves on a full-price one for Rita, but now he won’t stop going on about it. He says calling it a favour is simply a fact. You decide who the party pooper is • Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror The way he presents it makes me feel as though I’m being a burden or that I now owe him something Continue reading...
One of the Bayern and France playmaker’s early coaches tells the story of how a move to Reading kickstarted a career If Michael Olise wins the World Cup , there will be a corner of a Hayes housing estate that is for ever France. It is Olise’s corner, a scrap of parkland grass among the west London suburban homes where a seven-year-old practised his football with his brother, Richard. “Football in ...
One of the Bayern and France playmaker’s early coaches tells the story of how a move to Reading kickstarted a career If Michael Olise wins the World Cup , there will be a corner of a Hayes housing estate that is for ever France. It is Olise’s corner, a scrap of parkland grass among the west London suburban homes where a seven-year-old practised his football with his brother, Richard. “Football in these conditions, it’s just freedom,” Olise told L’Équipe last month. “It’s not really learning in the strict sense. It was simply the pleasure of playing football. I just loved it.” Sean Conlon, one of Olise’s early coaches with Old Isleworthians in west London, recalls: “I would go over to his house and he would be practising outside with Richard. That little estate probably really aided him; there weren’t a lot of cars but it had quite a lot of concrete open space and then a small green. He’d just be practising out here all the time, obsessed with football.” Continue reading...
gonin/iStock via Getty Images The number of private equity exits slowed during the first half of 2026, as market uncertainty continued to prevent buyers and sellers from finding common ground on valuations. Global private equity and venture capital firms announced 1,504 exits between Jan. 1 and June 30, down 6% from the 1,601 exits recorded in the first half of 2025, according to S&P Global Market...
Presented by Oracle NetSuite Every major technology transition produces a set of assumptions about where the market is headed. The assumptions are often directionally correct, but they tend to underestimate the degree to which organizations adapt new technologies to their own circumstances. AI is following a similar trajectory. Many current discussions about enterprise AI assume a future in which ...
Presented by Oracle NetSuite Every major technology transition produces a set of assumptions about where the market is headed. The assumptions are often directionally correct, but they tend to underestimate the degree to which organizations adapt new technologies to their own circumstances. AI is following a similar trajectory. Many current discussions about enterprise AI assume a future in which employees interact with business systems through a common interface. The details vary depending on the prediction, but the destination often looks similar: a conversational system that becomes the primary way people access information, complete tasks, and interact with software. The history of enterprise technology suggests a more complicated outcome. Organizations rarely adopt new capabilities uniformly because different parts of the business operate under different constraints. A finance team responsible for reporting accuracy, controls, and approvals approaches technology differently than an analytics group exploring operational data. Both groups have different requirements than a customer service organization focused on response times and case resolution. Even when there is broad agreement that a technology is valuable, the path to adoption tends to vary across functions. The shift to cloud software followed this pattern — some organizations moved aggressively while others spent years operating hybrid environments. Different departments often modernized on different timelines, reflecting the priorities of the work itself rather than any industry consensus about the correct pace of adoption. There’s no one-size-fits-all AI AI has accelerated many aspects of technology development, but it has not changed this underlying dynamic. Organizations still evaluate new capabilities through the lens of existing processes, responsibilities, and operational requirements. For some employees, the most useful AI capabilities may be the least visible ones. A finance manager closing the ...
Insight with Haslinda Amin, a daily news program featuring in-depth, high-profile interviews and analysis to give viewers the complete picture on the stories that matter. The show features prominent leaders spanning the worlds of business, finance, politics and culture. (Source: Bloomberg)
Insight with Haslinda Amin, a daily news program featuring in-depth, high-profile interviews and analysis to give viewers the complete picture on the stories that matter. The show features prominent leaders spanning the worlds of business, finance, politics and culture. (Source: Bloomberg)
President Trump flew partway home from a NATO summit on an old Air Force One plane instead of the new Qatari-gifted plane, a surprise swap that came as the U.S. and Iran began trading strikes again. (Image credit: Alex Brandon)
President Trump flew partway home from a NATO summit on an old Air Force One plane instead of the new Qatari-gifted plane, a surprise swap that came as the U.S. and Iran began trading strikes again. (Image credit: Alex Brandon)
Shares of Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ: PLTR) got pummeled during the first six months of 2026, with shares plunging 34%, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence . That's a far cry from the 10% gains of the S&P 500 . Artificial intelligence (AI) stocks have been taking a breather over the past year as investors have grown more discriminating, casting a wary eye on stocks with...
Shares of Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ: PLTR) got pummeled during the first six months of 2026, with shares plunging 34%, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence . That's a far cry from the 10% gains of the S&P 500 . Artificial intelligence (AI) stocks have been taking a breather over the past year as investors have grown more discriminating, casting a wary eye on stocks with frothy valuations and looking for the "next big thing." However, Palantir's stellar results and its lower stock price have combined to bring its valuation back to Earth, making the price more reasonable than it's been in some time. Is the worst over? Let's take a look. Continue reading
Qualcomm is expanding beyond mobile chips with an AI infrastructure strategy spanning data centers, connectivity and custom silicon despite a sector pullback.
Qualcomm is expanding beyond mobile chips with an AI infrastructure strategy spanning data centers, connectivity and custom silicon despite a sector pullback.